Tuesday, May 12, 2009

A small controversy has been stirring in Britain these past few weeks. Well-known naturalist and broadcaster Sir David Attenborough spoke out, stating that there are too many people in the world. Furthermore, he became a patron of the Optimum Population Trust, the leading think tank in the UK concerned with the impact of population growth on the environment. The Trust (www.optimumpopulation.org) campaigns for stabilization and gradual population decrease globally and in the UK.

What astonishes me is that many people can’t — or refuse to — see the simple logic that motivates Attenborough. Author Austin Williams, for example, attacked Attenborough, stating that ``experts can still be stupid when they speak on subjects of which they know little.'' What balderdash! Attenborough is a knowledgeable naturalist and understands that as human numbers increase other animal populations will decrease. More roads, more suburbs, more deforestation, more fishing and more monoculture agriculture will decrease natural habitat. Duh, that’s really hard to understand, isn’t it Mr. Williams?

As large predators disappear, lower forms of life will flourish. Already, we have jellyfish infestations because sea turtle numbers have declined. Many scientists feel that in the future algae, molds, rats, cockroaches, mosquitoes and other ``resilient'' creatures will flourish because all their predators will have disappeared. And there are dozens and dozens of other environmental, pollution and resource problems that are looming ever larger as human population grows.

Thumbs up to Attenborough. Thumbs down to all those who ignore simple logic.

4 comments:

One day our children will look back in anger and utter disbelief at many too many leaders and followers in my not-so-great generation who had the chance at least to try and mitigate the fully expected damages of pollution, climate change, environmental degradation, resource dissipation, biodiversity extinction and overpopulation but abjectly failed because we chose to play around the edges of the global challenges before us and refused to take demonstrably responsible action in the face of clear and present dangers. Sacrifices of 'sacred cows' and 'golden calves' often associated with being honest, earning wealth, exercising moral courage and making necessary changes were too damn hard for so soft, satisfied, sanctimonious, selfish and stupid a generation of leading elders, I suppose.

The human community has been manipulated by Masters of the Universe (MOTU) who disingenuously have been perpetrating possible fraud by duplicitously engaging in the promulgation of 680 trillion dollars of toxic financial innovations. These dodgy financial instruments are called derivatives and are designed by self-seeking, self-proclaimed ‘financial engineers’ for the purpose of increasing their own wealth and the wealth of the “sophisticated ‘investors’” who play along with them. These “inventors” of what are known as asset and credit bubbles (note well, bubbles are known to burst) have had a large role to play in collapsing the global financial system and cratering the human community’s real world economy.

Of course there are other groups of arrogant and greedy leaders who qualify as Masters of the Universe. What is important is that they know who they are. As anyone can imagine, they do not care to be called out or held to account for the unearned wealth they have accumulated and stashed in tens of thousands of Swiss bank accounts.

It would probably take two volumes to lay out what is happening. The first book would present the ways Masters of the Universe distinguish themselves from others and a second book would contain a list of people who meet the minimum standards to be one of the MOTU.

What the family of humanity needs to understand more clearly and quickly is this: Masters of the Universe among us serve nothing higher than themselves and no one other than themselves, co-conspirators and their minions in their pernicious efforts to recklessly and conspicuously overconsume Earth’s perishable fruits and to relentlessly hoard Earth’s non-perishable resources.

Masters of the Universe are conspicuously silent and duplicitously in denial about the planetary emergency the family of humanity can see before us on the horizon. These leaders prefer that we ignore the human-driven global challenges for which my not-so-great generation of arrogant and greedy elders bears a lion's share of responsibility. MOTU would have us believe that their patently unsustainable lifestyles are somehow not threatening to destroy life as we know it or Earth as a fit place for human habitation by our children and coming generations. The hubristic, avaricious and personally protective reactions of these leading elders to real threats to human wellbeing and environmental health could result in tragic and calamitous consequences for our children. MOTU place primary value on the only object of their true desire and affection: the distinctly human-designed and manmade Economic Colossus called the global political economy.

For these ideologues, economic modelers and magical thinkers, the Earth is like an enduring maternal presence, a gigantic cornucopian teat at which the human species can endlessly suckle without precipitating catastrophic revenge effects that could produce some sort of colossal ecological wreckage, one that leaves this world we are blessed to inhabit in shambles.

What a sham it is that such a fantastic and utterly unreal view of the Earth has been widely shared, consensually validated and commonly held up as truth by the super-rich and powerful for the realization of their own immediate selfish interests.... come what may for the children, biodiversity, Earth's body and its environs.

Yeah… species extinctions are a natural process and it’s likely that we’re simply coming toward the decline of the Bird and Mammal dominated biosphere and into a new phase. It is also quite likely if you take a thorough look at the fossil record, that the highest of those species that have developed so far, are meant to take over the biosphere and it seems to me that it’s the human species that fulfills this role, if we choose to not act like animals and be intelligent. Population caps or population reduction is a desire for the extinction of the greatest creation the biosphere has been able to produce; humanity. It also is rather peculiar to me that a bunch of uppity oligarchs like Prince Philip and Sir David Attenborough are pushing this green population control stuff, I think it’s that they only want them and their families to live on planet earth so they can do it with donkeys like Bertrand Russel… hmmm… Well according to this video and Dwight Dana, the entire biosphere had conspired to create a species capable of cognition; maybe all this “naturalist”, “green” anti-development/anti-progress stuff is just unnatural Imperial Brainwashing…? http://larouchepac.com/node/19452

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RUNAWAY HUMAN POPULATION — A Blog

My goal with this blog is to generate dialogue about human population and all its myriad impacts. It will not post news items about the deteriorating global scene (even though there is much to post). Instead, I want to get people talking, thinking about this immense problem. We desperately need to find workable solutions.

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Contributor

I'm an environment and travel writer with an irresistable urge to travel and immerse myself in places near and far.
An ardent environmentalist and nature lover, I enjoy kayaking, hiking and a glass of wine with friends. I have three blogs: a fun one on travel (www.immersed-in-away.blogspot.com), a serious one about human population and the future of our good planet (www.runaway-human-population.blogspot.com) and one about the delightful island where I live (perfectlittlependerisland.blogspot.com).